In the key of Bart

Woman, 23, charged with fatal stabbing outside Portage Place

A 23-year-old woman has been charged with fatally stabbing a woman after they argued outside the entrance of Portage Place mall in the middle of the afternoon Tuesday.

Police officers responded to the area on the 300 block of Portage Avenue around 2:45 p.m. where they found Helen Annie Spence, 58, suffering from severe and life-threatening injuries, said Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Claude Chancy.

“There was a verbal dispute that led to a physical altercation, at which point the suspect armed herself with an edged weapon and then proceeded to stab the victim,” Chancy said, adding the alleged killer and victim knew each other.

Spence was taken to the hospital in critical condition, where she later died. Spence was a member of Misipawistik Cree Nation, which used to be called Grand Rapids First Nation, but had been living in Winnipeg recently.

Winnipeg musicians respond to pandemic in different ways through music

By now, everybody knows what the pandemic looks like: masks, on faces or on the sidewalk; kitchen tables transmogrifying into co-working spaces; hands cracked and red from sanitizer.

But what does the pandemic look like when musicians start putting pen to paper? And what will it sound like once those words and music are recorded? The Free Press reached out to Manitoba musicians to find out, and discovered some are leaning into the new state of the world for inspiration, while others are avoiding it altogether.

Ava Wray finds humour in pandemic lifeAva Wray had good reason to feel pessimistic. She lost her job. Her relationship ended. It seemed she was spending more time with cats than with people (though, admittedly, she sort of liked that). When it came to writing songs, it was hard to focus on anything but the implosion of her world and the world around her.

“So often, lyrics come from the events in our lives, but suddenly, nothing was happening,” says the singer and guitarist, a member of local duo Bicycle Face and other projects. “So I had to look around and write about what was happening — right then.”

Tory meddling could cost MPI millions, boost Autopac rates

The Pallister government has directed Manitoba Public Insurance to give complete control of its future online product sales to insurance brokers, a move that could cost the corporation an extra $23 million over five years and boost Autopac rates, according to documents obtained by the Free Press.

The documents, which include emails, letters, briefing notes and presentations, show repeated interventions by the Progressive Conservative government on behalf of brokers and shed light on why the Tory-appointed MPI board of directors sought a legal opinion last year to clarify its rights and responsibilities.

The documents also reveal that the PC government directed MPI management last fall to extend the corporation's contract with brokers by two years to Feb. 28, 2021 at a remuneration rate MPI viewed as excessive.

MPI had first proposed a less generous package than the brokers had been receiving, and then offered zero per cent increases in the first two years followed by 0.75 per cent in Year 3, mimicking government policy on civil servant and Crown corporation employee pay. The brokers wound up receiving annual increases to their base $84.5 million compensation that are indexed to inflation (the Consumer Price Index, which rose 1.9 per cent in March compared to a year earlier ).

Conservatives peddle disinformation as they decry a fictional truck tax

The framing of the false “truck tax” is especially troubling, given the Conservatives' increasing willingness to tolerate blatant conspiracy theories.

Resilience, perseverance in pursuit of normal life

Roger McNeill says not much rattled his wife Pat — but miller moths terrified her.

“With a moth in the house, she would freak out,” he says of his wife, who died Oct. 22, 2020, at age 82.

That a tiny bug riled her always struck her husband as ironic, given all she had gone through.

Pat McNeill, after all, had survived polio — a disease that had a lasting impact on her life. Consequently, as a young adult, she often wondered if she would lead a life many took for granted: getting married and raising a family.